Entertainment

TED Needs a Devil's Advocate

If you like a hefty side order of creature comforts with your inspirational talks, there is no better place in the world than the annual TED conference, the grandaddy of all those TEDx conferences. The one that wrapped up in Long Beach last week left attendees wanting for less than the average 18th century aristocrat.

The opulence began before you entered the main hall. Three giant tents were filled with couches, coolers and every kind of organic snack imaginable (to keep you going between meals served at every break). Volunteer baristas poured free lattes. The talks were live-streamed on widescreen TVs, their volume turned way up to drown out the AC units blasting unnecessarily cold air all day long.

Your ice-cold comfort during talks on the perils of climate change was assured.

Inside the main hall, if you could squeeze past the crowds at yet more barista stations, was where it got really crazy. Here, a sponsor — Target — had constructed what could only be described as giant layers of undulating red couch. You could recline like a Roman in its bed-like booths, each wired for sound and sockets; overhead, the conference was beamed on a sloping ceiling.

You could charge up your smartphone and enjoy every single clarion call to elevate the world's poor, each thrilling tale of adversity, without ever getting up.

TED's Ch-ch-ch-changes

This is the point in the editorial where I add the caveat: I'm as much of a sucker for a good TED talk as the next denizen of the intellectual Internet. The format hasn't racked up a billion views since 2006 by accident; it is, for the most part, genuinely moving, educational and accessible stuff. This year's talks were no exception, and we've highlighted some of the best over the past week.

Sugata Mitra and his $1 million TED prize-winning "school in the cloud"; Amanda Palmer on connecting with your fans; Allan Savory on desertification; Bono on the approaching end of global poverty; Peter Gabriel jamming with a chimp and launching the "Interspecies Internet." These were just the tip of an iceberg of impressive, inspiring ideas.

But the 2013 conference was the first one I'd attended since TED 2003, held in a much smaller coastal California town, Monterey. And that ten-year gap afforded me some troubling comparisons. It wasn't just the overly luxurious atmosphere in Long Beach; it was the lack of critical appraisal around each talk, and the rousing standing ovations that seemed to cut short any notion of debate.

Back in 2003, when the audience was less than half the size, there was a certain sense of iconoclasm about the whole event. There was respectful applause, but few standing ovations. The speakers were grilled on stage and mocked by comedians. This was as it should be: if an idea can make it through grilling and roasting, it really is worth spreading.

This year, save for one brief debate between economists who disagreed about technology's impact on growth, and a softball interview with Elon Musk, there were barely any questions, and only the very lightest of satirical roastings from Julia Sweeney.

In groups, or with strangers, this year's TED attendees were afraid to criticize any given talk lest it was one that gave someone there an epiphany — and lest it get in the way of the networking most were really eager to do in order to increase the value of their $7,500 tickets.

Alone and in confidence, however, they displayed unease about this giant soap bubble of hope we appeared to be inflating, one that no one dared pop for fear of being labeled a pessimist.

In 2003, TEDsters who feared their ideas were too controversial would ask that their talk be off the record. Nobody worried about that in 2013. The only thing off the record was the names of the Hollywood celebrities in attendance; we were repeatedly reminded not to tweet about them.

Then there's the problem of the TED cadence, an intensely emotive style of delivery which has become something of a cliche (and which the Onion skewered in this spot-on parody). "There is a tendency on the part of some speakers to overpolish and overperform," says Chris Anderson, TED's curator for the last decade.

There's little TED can do about that, Anderson says, other than encourage the speakers to be as heartfelt as they can be, and to only post online the talks that don't sound so prepackaged. He also made it clear, from the stage, that attendees should not feel obligated to join in the standing ovations that followed practically every talk. (The cadence and the over-the-top standing Os continued regardless.)

Fair enough: the TED organization, a lovely down-to-earth bunch of folks who aren't nearly as elitist as their attendees or sponsors, are trying to rein in much of the hype. They understand that it gets in the way of the ideas. But they could be doing much more.

Give the Devil His Due

Back in the 16th century, the Catholic Church decided to have a lawyer argue the case against sainthood any time someone was up for canonization. This was the so-called devil's advocate, and he solved a problem that's inherent in our tribal, conformist nature. He was the designated skeptic.

Indeed, when Pope John Paul II abolished the devil's advocate role in 1983, there was a sudden rush of canonizations: from one or two a year to about 20 a year. Who would speak ill of a potential saint in the Vatican, if it weren't specifically their job to do so?

Everywhere you find the devil's advocate role — the irritant, the gadfly, the investigative reporter — it does wonders for sorting truth from fiction. Stewart Brand, a veteran TEDster, plays this role at his Long Now Foundation; its monthly talks are kind of a long-form TED. Audience members write questions on cards throughout the talks, and an ever-smiling Brand quizzes the speaker with the trickiest ones at the end.

Anderson and his team see TED's 18-minute talks as fragile things, the genesis of an idea. You sense their reluctance to smother them in their cradles. But in the age of online video, these talks are not fragile at all: they are viral. They are just long enough to stir us; they are candidates for secular sainthood. They can change millions of minds in minutes, and must be unleashed with great care.

TED 2014 is already shaping up to be a little different. It's moving to Vancouver, and Anderson is slashing the available spaces from 1,600 to 1,400. So here's my modest suggestion: add a devil's advocate, separate from the host and curator. Save five minutes after every talk for him or her to put that speaker through the wringer, and include the questioning as part of the online talk.

Perhaps Bono, who has been known to play a satanic alter ego on stage, can do the job — pro bono, of course.

TED Vs. Real Life

On the plane home from Long Beach, I found myself sharing a row with a TEDster and a guy who couldn't have been more blue collar. The latter was clearly nervous about flying, and we started chatting. Turned out he'd just come from a training course for his first new job in years, installing walk-in bathtubs for the elderly — a growth business in greying California.

That guy's story was as interesting, as revealing about the world and the economy, as anything we'd seen on stage that week. And he needed to tell it to someone. But the TEDster in the aisle seat just kept on glaring at the notes he'd made on every speaker. For all those talks on connecting with humanity, on small acts of kindness and attention, on change and growth, he was uninterested when it was right under his nose back in the real world.

That, in short, is why TED needs to put self-questioning deep in its DNA. It could be the most valuable lesson attendees learn all week.

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